8:30ish start, but it will probably be a little later than that. The game is on Fox Sports 1, so hopefully we get a break from Bill Walton. I usually like him, but that “Conference of Champions” stuff was SO annoying.

I guess some people are still questioning if the Beavs are in the NCAA…I think it’s “probable” at this point, to the point I feel confident saying they’re in, but like some have noted, these are humans making the selections and they have all kinds of bias and hangups that we can’t know.

The only think that pissed me off about last night was Tinkle coughing all over his players. I really hope guys aren’t sick today…

The only thing that could knock them out would be teams outside the bubble winning the auto bid in the A-10, AAC, ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, and the PAC12. And it would have to happen 5 times for the Beavs to get knocked out.

I see them playing loose tonight with nothing to lose. Trust what got them there and play hard. Last night was a bit white knuckle but ASU helped by playing pretty bad.

Yup, I wasn’t too happy with Tinkle touching players hands and yelling/talking/coughing at them. Someone said they thought it was norovirus because of how sudden it happened after he ate, but if that was the case I can guarantee he wouldn’t have even been on the court last night because he’d be glued to a toilet. It sounds like regular old Influenza – super contagious. I am worried about our players.

I suspect it is super contagious – which means the bug will incubate for about 7-10 days and, depending upon individual immunity, hit then. I hope the players are overdosing on vitamin C, taking some zinc and drinking gallons of water. Really dumb of Tinkle. He has good enough assistant coaches.

His D was more than solid. Everyone on Cal’s roster is bigger and more athletic than everyone on our side except GP2. He packs a ton of strength to counter that off the ball and to make chesting look like nothing when on ball. But he didn’t have enough confidence to take the three or so open looks he rarely got on O.

Classic Olaf/Reid. Critical rebound opportunity for the taking if they want it. Neither of them seemed to. Does anyone else see how bad Reid is? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. He’s worse than Joe burton.

Olaf, Eubanks, Reid and LMW are a combined 1 of 11 from the field and LMW and Olaf are missing wide open shots left and right. Beavers easily could be winning this game despite the slow start. Derrick Bruce has been incredible lately. I’m not sure if they should even bother playing Malcolm in the second half. You get this win and you’re a complete lock for the NCAA tournament and wouldn’t have to play in a play-in game. Gotta find a way to get this W and if Bruce has to play the entire second half, you gotta do it. GP2 post ups are needed more often. He scored easily on one in the first half and he’s comfortable there. Let Bruce run the show and get GP2 his looks on postups

That was Tres’ job. None of our others can make space in the lane right now. Drew and Rakocevic will both be much better next year. Even N’diaye will be better. That will be a great group of bigs next year with Tres back and Kone coming in. And the year after will be that much better.

What we saw last night was Tinks throwing our kitchen sink of bigs at Rabb. He’s the best player in the Pac, but he’s spent the season as a somewhat shy frosh. If he puts the team on his back, Cal can make a deep run.

And I will not be sad to see him go to the NBA, where he will be a star.

I remember reading an article (I think it was from OregonLive) where Bruce’s AAU or high school coach said that he would be the best PG in the PAC. If tonight is a sign of things to come, it could be very true for the next 2 or 3 years.

If Oregon State indeed makes the NCAA tournament, there needs to be a ton of Bruce and not much of Duvivier and Eubanks. Beavers starting Eubanks and Duvivier in both halves got them behind big early in both halves. They completely outplayed Cal aside from those two stretches. Hopefully Tinkle realizes this and starts his best lineup

The thing is, Eubanks is struggling more on offense than defense imo and that’s not saying he looks good defensively, he is just that lost on offense. He can’t score on the block and can’t catch passes and looks like the game is too fast for him. He should just come off the bench. In the NCAA Tournament, you can’t roll out a Duvivier-Payton-Thompson-Olaf-Eubanks lineup. They’ll play a good team and they’ll kill that frontcourt. I’d give Rakocevic the starting center spot and see how it goes. Olaf and Eubanks together is just a mess on both ends. At least Rakocevic defends and can score occasionally.

Big G actually looks like a center and plays like one to some degree. I don’t know why he wasn’t developed to his fullest once Gomis was out. Eubanks can run the floor and get points against soft teams, but he was out of his league tonight.

Really glad to see the Beavs fought to win instead of just sitting back and being content with their position. Bruce will be less of a ball hog next year, hopefully, and the graduation of players like Schaaftenar and Reid should be addition by subtraction.

It’s going to be great for the team to get some REAL post-season experience.

A lot of that was Cal switching the pick and roll and having a SF or PF on him, so they isolate Bruce against him and it was Bruce’s job to take him 1 on 1. That’s why it looked that way. Beavers don’t have a lot of options offensively and he was on fire, so I get why that was the plan on a lot of possessions.

For someone who comes across as so assured he’s right about everything, you’ve gotten pretty insecure about this, haven’t you?

Anyway, you weren’t 100% . You got UCLA wrong (instead of predicting the Beavers would win, you said it didn’t look good for them), not to mention there were games like Washington where you didn’t even post until the final minutes, so I can’t even judge if you got those games right or not. Even if you were 100% right, the sample size is too small for me to take it seriously.

You should test your predictive powers on the NCAA tournament. See how many wins you correctly predict by watching just the first five minutes of every game you can catch.

Exactly……and I don’t know what the hell CR was thinking back in the day…..Reid, Olaf and Cheikh are three of the most unathletic big men I’ve ever seen. I hope Kone is the answer, but I think it’s going to take more than one strong, athletic forward.

Cameron Oliver was one recruit that Craig did manage to get committed that is a great player. Oregon State with Oliver at the 4 would probably have 3-4 more wins right now if he actually came to Oregon State. Oliver had 26 points and 15 boards today in the MW tournament. He had more rebounds than Oregon State’s entire frontcourt had total points tonight. He would have been the missing piece

Did Oliver just panic when he saw the Beavs returning roster last year? I think there was a WT comment at the time that he wanted Oliver on the team. In hindsight, not a good decision. He would have made the Beavs better and garnered more exposure in the P-12.

RPI only dropped to 33rd. In good shape but some of these other games still to play will affect the Beavs final RPI. Some teams ahead of UCLA (103rd) and ASU (100th) losing to get them back into the top 100 would help. Nevada (114) and UCSB (95) also still alive in their conference tournaments. If Nevada can beat San Diego St tomorrow that would be a good RPI boost. See what can happen when you don’t consistently schedule non conference cupcakes????

SDSU has no chance if they don’t win their conference tournament. Resume is average at best. 1-4 against top 50 RPI teams, 3-3 vs 51-100 RPI teams. They also have a very bad loss to San Diego. They lose to anyone in the Mountain West tournament and their RPI will drop far enough to put them squarely on the outside looking in with fellow brethren Valpo, Monmouth and St Mary’s. Not good news for a mid major program. Only Fresno St and Boise St have an RPI in the top 100 (78 and 99) and losing to any of the other 3 teams left would be devastating for their chances. Boise St was kicked to the curb today by Colorado St. The MWC is a one bid league this year. Whoever wins their conference tournament is in.

Don’t think it was updated after the Beavers loss tonight, but Lunardi has the Beavers in as a last 4 bye and all the teams close to the Beavers either lost or have yet to beat anyone of significance in their conference tourney. If UConn loses to Cincinnati and Michigan loses to Indiana later, the Beavers are a lock to make it imo. Only way the Beavers don’t make it now is if something extremely unlikely happens and like 5-6 teams go on crazy runs out of the Big Ten, AAC and A-10 and SEC. Feel good about Oregon State making it, I just hope they can avoid a Tuesday or Wednesday game in Dayton

That game was…expected. I remember how Angry hoped we would stalk them and stay in it, and I actually think that would be a good strategy. Cal just made a couple buckets at the end to put us away, but it coulda went either way. That corner 3 Mathews hit to put them up 6 at the end when we had them on the ropes was a dagger.

But great game. And we showed that we’re a tourney team, in spite of some of our glaring deficiencies, we can play with anyone. We had problems with interior defense, and Rabb played out of his mind. I saw his post-game interview, and I really hope he does well in the NBA. Trading Ben Kone for Jarmal hopefully works out. I’ll take Kone’s growing pains and freshman mistakes over Jarmal tripping refs and throwing up hot garbage at the rim any day of the week.

One of the most annoying things that our bigs do as well is that they show SUPER hard on pick and roll, like why is CND or Big G out at 28 feet? You should only hedge so hard. He created 2 turnovers that way, but most of the time a good ball handler is gonna shovel the ball to a wide open post under the rim when he rolls correctly.

I also have questions about our offensive efficiency, like that has to be cleaned up. I think it gets better when we have Tres back and Stevie is in, but I’m wary of relying on guys’ offensive talents like that. We’re fine now, but if we’re not gonna play hard nose defense then I need to see something more than “let’s dribble around and see what happens”. We saw flashes of it with Bruce penetrating and dumping it off, but our bigs have horrible hands.

Man. I’m just hoping for good things on Selection Sunday. That’s all that matters. Are we in or not. Please let us be in.

Oregon State’s defense was pretty good once they went to the small lineup. Frustrated Cal for long stretches. Cal hit some seriously tough threes. They’re incredibly talented and not much can be done when they’re hitting contested shots. The issue on offense is right now they have 3 good offensive talents without Tres. Bruce, GPII and STJ can get to the rim and Bruce and STJ can hit threes, nobody else can do much of anything offensively. Makes the Tres injury a huge blow. When you don’t have bigs who can get buckets and when the role players like Malcolm and LMW aren’t making plays, it will come down to the 3 main guys making something happen.

Jabari Bird really was the stopgap every single time we would make a run. He’s a good player. If we would put together a couple baskets and Bruce would hit a three, he’d come right back and hit one of his own off dribble kick or kick out from the post every single time.

When Eubanks gets his foul situation under control, he’s gonna be the real deal. I still think he’s NBA draft worthy after his 3rd year. We need him getting buckets in the paint to fill out the offense. But you’re right, we just don’t have consistent offensive threats all over the floor when Tres is out. Gonna be nice having him back, I think the future is bright even without GP2.

I agree we look like a young team with a lot of room for growth. It will be addition by subtraction next year. We will definitely miss gp2 mostly his rebounding cuz we suck at that lol. However all of our freshman even Eubanks (although he hasn’t ) show that they can put up 20 pt games and play solid defense, as well as maintain composure under pressure. My big concern is having another solid big man next to Eubanks.

I am not sold on Eubanks as a NBA prospect. He is only 6’10” and while he can jump, he really doesn’t have the hips, lateral quickness or the offensive game for the 4 spot in the NBA and at 6’10” you need to be a real bruiser to play the 5 in the NBA (or have a 3 point shot). IMO he got exposed bad last night by NBA level talent. He has only really impressed against inferior athletes, he has a long way to go. I like the upside there and if the game ever slows down for him he will be a solid piece of the rotation. My guess is he is here for 4 years then goes on a European journey. A lot can change in 4 years. I think Bruce is the guy on the roster with the most NBA potential, a lot of teams go crazy over combine numbers, and Bruce checks a lot of the boxes for a NBA PG physically.

Yeah… he could be a monster if he learns to play in big boy land. He has all the physical gifts to be dominating inside if he could just feel what’s going on around him instead of darting his head this way and that trying to keep up with the game.

I still like Eubanks, though I agree a lot of his shortcomings are mostly due to being a freshman and the game being played at light speed compared to what he came from in high school. He needs to adapt to it & do some hard work on his game over the summer. His numbers actually compare pretty favorably with the freshman stats of players like AC Green and Charlie Sitton. Those guys didn’t come in and dominate as freshmen, yet still turned out to be pretty fair D-1 players. I think Eubanks will too. I will predict OSU fans will hate to see him go after his senior year. He just needs some help down there in the 4 spot.

Well I can’t say that was a bad loss. Cal made shots at the end to win the game. Turnovers in the first half cost them a lot of points. They only had 4 turnovers in the 2nd half.

But there’s a lot of areas to improve. Mostly in the post. I mean Payton out rebounded them all combined.
Eubanks – What happened? Just disappeared. Out of position many times for rebounds. Big G is light years ahead of him on boxing out guys.
Big G – Needs to work on his post game more. Dribbled right into the double team.
Olaf – If you’re going to foul someone, foul them hard so they don’t get the and 1.
N’Diaye – Obviously will get exposed if left in too long which happened because of Eubanks.

All of them dribbled too much when the got the ball in the post. Resulted a few turnovers. Should be one or two dribbles and then make their move or kick it out. The guards didn’t help by moving to get open.

It was a strange sight to see the Beavs play 4 guards at once. But it worked. Would rather not see Olaf as the one big in that lineup though.

I’m going to say for now, Bruce’s game is an outlier. But it’s nice to see that he has a lot of potential. He wore down a bit at the end. This game will get people pretty excited for next year.

I’m confident the Beavs are in. Likely as a 9 or 10 seed. Hopefully not the play in game.

Teams you want to lose today to either solidify the beavs spots by taking out other bubble teams, cinderellas or improve seeding.

1. UConn – Loss will knock them out of any bracket that has them in it. A win will put them in. Cincinnati won’t be knocked out even with a loss.
2. VCU
3. Michigan
4. Ohio St
5. St Bonaventure
6. George Washington
7. Florida
8. South Carolina

OSU is putting on a Selection Sunday event at 2:30 in the Reser club level. Does anyone know if this means they are 100% they are getting into the tournament? It would be very awkward to go to that and they don’t make it in. Talk about a kick in the gut for the team.

Why the hell do I need more alcohol while I’m in public? I like alcohol. I don’t need to project me using alcohol. I see no reason for me to project to the public that I am drunk. Enough people know me that there are some truly awesome stories about waking up in trees and such.

What you call PC might really be what others tell you is PC… or something. But you think a label needs to be applied.

There was a fair amount of Beaver fans, about as many as Cal had. There are a ton of Arizona and Utah fans. Not very many fans from anywhere else.

They way they had it setup the beaver section was next to the cal section it was weird. But we sat behind the bench 20 rows up and there are fans from the other schools so they just watch and don’t root during the game

Look at what we had last night. Now replace Olaf with Kone. Replace Reid with Tres. Replace GP2 with Jaquori. And replace LMW with Dew.

And we get to see what Manuel can do after a year in system.

Daniel can technically apply for a sixth year, and would likely get it. But I think he moves on with his life.

So we get net gains for next year. And that’s with us getting a lot younger. But all our frosh now have one campaign under their belts. And they don’t know anything about OSU not going to the post season.

They look like they don’t ever want know that. This team will be very good next year. And it will be scary good after that if Tinks keeps up with the recruiting. I imagine the team will recruit itself soon enough.

edit: I don’t know what the rules are for graduate players. It just occurred to me that Daniel, having graduated, isn’t really subject to APR like the rest of the team. So how would a sixth year be viewed by the NCAA when two of those years are as a graduate? Again, he likely moves on. But it’s an interesting situation.

Hopefully this year does open up recruiting. In power conferences, to stay on top it means the coaching staff is able to consistently land solid 4 star recruits who can come in and make a big impact right away.

The incoming class isn’t really much to get excited about. It’s really middle of the pack when compared to the rest of the conference. To get to the top, they’ll need to step up the recruiting. Landing Tinkle and STJ were nice but need to follow it up with highly rated guys outside the family tree. Some may say McLoughlin is a 4 star guy but to me he’s a solid high three star.

There’s still a scholarship or two remaining for the spring signing period. Maybe they’ll save it for a SR grad transfer who can play in the post.

I’d rather Daniel get his medical exemption and play a sixth year than hire a merc.

And while the coaches’ sons canard plays, the future is quite bright with the other players who were not 4* doing what they’re doing. You are vastly underrating the incoming class. And there will be another.

Next year looks very promising especially since Bruce is starting to show what he can do when given opportunities (been asking for that since January). The main concern is how well Tinkle and Kone recover from their fairly major injuries. I think they still need another playable big man as Kone is only 6’8″-6′-9″. We need a 6’10” guy who isn’t a complete project to really take the next step IMO.

I think Kone has the size to play center in the P12. He has great athleticism, broad shoulders, plenty of muscle and a long wingspan. DeJuan Blair is shorter than Kone and Blair dominated the Big East.

I’ve compared him to Buck Williams. But that’s an athleticism and D call. If you watch his O play, he most resembles Tim Duncan… right down to the little slouch he does when he thinks nobody is watching.

I believe you all do not know what we have in that young man for years to come. His play will be the I-told-you-so of whatever I’m saying now plus the future.

Or maybe I’m wrong.

edit: I’m not wrong. I wasn’t wrong about all the frosh we have now. I’m not wrong about the incoming class. I have yet to see the following class, but I hope, for my viewing pleasure, that I get to see Ethan Thompson filling it up.

I apologize for bringing any politics to this side. I’ve tried to stay away from that here. It’s hard because Nikegon is a political creature. But I try to abstain on this site… sans the asymmetrical outbursts… which I might do every now and then.

Bracket experts, I have a question. Do we need USC to lose to Utah to give us a better shot at getting into the tournament? I’m thinking yes since USC is also a bubble team on Lunardi’s bracket, but I wasn’t sure if them losing would make us look worse.

Have a spidey sense that Seton Hall or Notre Dame is likely our matchup. I like both since a 10 seed is better than being in the 8 or 9 slot. Slightly prefer Seton Hall in Oklahoma City by a hair. Beavs could potentially face Oklahoma later in that bracket. Beavs are worthy of the 10 seed where odds are better of a deeper run.